For Six Trillion Dollars, We're Not Even Getting Universal Health Care?
This is the second of a series from The Western Journal that will examine in depth some of the big-ticket items the president and Congress are proposing for the 2022 budget, which would be the largest increase since World War II.
On Friday, President Joe Biden submitted his fiscal year 2022 budget request to Congress. Weighing in at an eye-popping $6 trillion, Biden’s budget is $1.2 trillion more than the record-setting one submitted by President Donald Trump last year.
One of the big line items of the budget is getting a lot of attention, not for what it contains, but for what is missing — health care.
The U.S. spent $1.2 trillion combined for Medicare and Medicaid last year, and The Lancet medical journal estimates a total cost for Medicare for all would be approximately $3 trillion annually.
If the president and Democrats in Congress truly wanted universal health care, now would be the time to enact it. Instead of rolling out health care for all, Biden chose to increase nearly every non-defense-related aspect of the budget.
Taxes Going Up
Biden’s budget called for corporate tax rates to increase from 21 to 28 percent, and the top tier capital gains tax rate would jump from 28 to 43.4 percent. The amount companies pay around the world averages 23.85 percent. Making it more expensive to do business domestically will certainly not help the retaining jobs on American soil.
And, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that increases to the capital gains tax rate would be applied retroactively — in late April. This means that individuals who made trades on the stock market with the assumption that they would be charged 28 percent will now be on the hook for nearly half of their gains.
More for Health Care, but Not Where It Counts
The Centers for Disease Control and Health and Human Services will see major bumps, with $25 billion more for HHS — a total of $132 billion. The CDC will see the biggest bump in 20 years, with a total of $8.7 billion.
But universal health care is nowhere in the budget. U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated that in 2019, America spent $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person for health care.
If we are already spending $3.8 trillion on private health care, and the Lancet number of $3 trillion is accurate, why not just make the switch right now?
It sounds like Biden is not the Democrat many voters were hoping for.
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